Upcoming Western US Events

The Windows 8 Unleashed Coding Competition is designed to encourage developers to innovate with Microsoft Windows 8 and increase the number of high-quality apps available in the Windows Store. ComponentArt is sponsoring this competition and will award $10,000 USD to the author(s) of the best application as decided by the Panel of Judges.

Want to help people find the closest organic produce? Interested in making it easier for people to conserve more energy? Can you make online donations easier? Windows 8 Apps for Social Good invites both new and seasoned developers to create an app for “social good” – and you could win one of three cash prizes to help fuel your dream and keep it going

The Windows 8 Unleashed Coding Competition is designed to encourage developers to innovate with Microsoft Windows 8 and increase the number of high-quality apps available in the Windows Store. ComponentArt is sponsoring this competition and will award $10,000 USD to the author(s) of the best application as decided by the Panel of Judges.

You can develop a Windows 8 app in 30 days – and we’re here to help. Begin your journey, sign up to get started and receive: Insider tips and tricks, personal on-the-phone access to a Windows 8 architect, an exclusive design consultation, and an opportunity to get expert help from a Microsoft Services Engineer at an App Excellence Lab.

We’re kicking off a new series covering all things Windows 8. Tune in as we cover the basics from what’s new in this latest installment as well as what you need to know to build, publish and profit from developing your first application. Be the first in line people….Windows 8 is coming and we need your apps!

The Tech Affiliate Program is your destination to earn and redeem points for support of your community activities! This will allow you to chose the support services that you need for your community’s specific interests, size, and activity level.

DevOps Series No. 3 | Provisioning for continuous testing with Azure by InCycle

This workshop will help attendees understand how to leverage Windows Azure and Visual Studio to create load tests with enough volume to stress large applications. This session will cover both Visual Studio and the deployment of Windows Azure hosts for creating the Load Testing infrastructure. Learn how to leverage Visual Studio Ultimate and Windows Azure for building large load tests for applications ranging from small to large.

Leverage the familiar features of PowerPoint to drive a completely new requirements-gathering experience. Storyboarding allows for powerful interaction between stakeholders, business analysts, developers, and testers, smoothing out the handoffs to ensure continuous delivery of customer value.

Coffee Talk: Embracing Modern App Development with Visual Studio 2012 by Northwest Cadence

Whether it’s Test-Driven Development, Test-First Development, or just plain figuring out whether your code does what you want it to do, unit testing is the standard for modern application development and a must-have for agile teams—but getting started can be a real challenge. What should you test? How granular should your tests be? How do you isolate code? How much code coverage is reasonable? If you’ve hit a wall, you’re not alone. Get straightforward, practical guidance you can use today to jump-start your team’s unit testing efforts and finally see for yourself what the big deal is.

Developers using Visual Studio Professional know how the right tools help teams collaborate to deliver great code. With Visual Studio Premium, extend that collaboration to the broader team—stakeholders, testers, and leadership—with all the power of Test Professional and additional Premium-only features to speed the delivery of high-quality, on-target applications. Expect to see: new features for first-class testing, robust code review workflows, agile management support, and end-to-end insights the entire team can rely on.

Highly complex, rapidly evolving applications in production leave no margin for error.Visual Studio Ultimate delivers the features enterprises need to deliver and maintain critical business functionality at a global pace and scale.Ensure high availability and performance, radically reduce defect repair times, and manage large, complex codebases while rapidly delivering new feature sets.Don’t fear the next challenge—embrace it with Visual Studio Ultimate.

If you have a Windows Store app idea, apply for the Windows Startup Challenge before January 29th to compete for a chance to launch your product at DEMO Mobile on April 17th, 2013 in front of top tier investors, VCs and tech press as well as other prizes including publicity, marketing and PR support.

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds. Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts.

The Silicon Valley New Technology Meetup is a community of 10,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area who share interests in startups, technology, and innovation. We get together on the first Tuesday of each month to showcase four new companies and network.

Startup Grind is an event series and website designed to help educate, inspire, and connect local entrepreneurs. Each month we welcome an amazing speaker who shares their story with our community and tells us what worked, what didn’t, and what they’ll do differently next time. It’s an amazing opportunity to learn from the best, network with other members of the startup community, and improve your chances of entrepreneurial success.

Node Bootcamp is a free event for developers and designers who want to learn Node.JS from the ground up with hands-on instruction from Node experts at Microsoft. No prior Node experience is necessary to attend. At Node Bootcamp you’ll learn how to build your first Node application from scratch, how to work with popular Node.JS development tools and editors, how to work with popular 3rd party Node frameworks, and how to deploy your applications to production hosting environments.

DATE

TIME

CITY

LINK

February 9. 2013

9:00 AM-5:30 PM

Mountain View, CA

TBD

February 23, 2013

9:00 AM-5:30 PM

Los Angeles, CA

TBD

March 30, 2013

9:00 AM-5:30 PM

Seattle, WA

TBD

Launch Conference | Hackathon

AngelHack unites developers around the world for a hackathon competition, where they can learn, network, innovate, and win prizes and funding for their ideas. In 2013 AngelHack will bring together over 9,000 developers around the world for one of the largest developer competitions ever. Top teams in every city will have 3 months to finish their projects before being flown into Silicon Valley for the chance to win over $1,000,000 in prizes.